Despite the sensation that Twitter has become, who needs to actually Twitter when you can have more fun being a Twitter Watcher? So if you want to see what other people are Twittering without having to login into Twitter, why not display an HTML badge of sorts on your blog? I know that Twitter has its own badge for your own Twittering, but I don’t really like their Flash badge. They have something called a JavaScript Badge, but as far as I can tell, you’re limited to viewing your own Twittering.

What if you want to view the Twitter public timeline? Well, you can use Feedburner‘s services and tools to create a nice, clean display of recent Twitterings. All you do is take the public timeline’s RSS feed and “burn” it in Feedburner. Then you use Feedburner’s BuzzBoost service (under the Publicize tab, first item at the top of the left column menu) to produce your HTML badge. You can choose the number of items to display (1-15, all), the display format (plain text, full HTML), the date of an item, etc.

Once you’ve configured your BuzzBoost for the Twitter public timeline feed, Feedburner will show you a snippet of Javascript/HTML code that you can insert into the sidebar of your website. If you want to apply some style to it, the BuzzBoost content has HTML attributes that can be controlled with simple CSS code. For the purposes of illustration, I’ve used an HTML table below (shock! horror! blasphemy!). If I have some time later, I’ll post some CSS.

There are a lot of other things you can do with BuzzBoost, but I’ve not been able to successfully use the output of any Yahoo Pipes. Until Yahoo offers a way to output clean RSS feed views of complex information, you have to massage custom feed mashups before you “badge” them in BuzzBoost.

Warning: content in Twitter public timeline below may have NSFW text. Click link to see content.

More →

Google will be the main power source behind the new Vodafone Live portal set to launch this summer. This from Vodafone Analyst Day in the UK that GoMo News attended.

We expect that Vodafone live! will now resemble more of an Internet mobile portal with access to off-portal content on the home page. Access to mySpace, YouTube and eBay will be pushed on the front page. It wasn’t specifically mentioned but we believe that the flat rate will be to push new IM services.

Vodafone isn’t always a centralized company. Vodafone Germany already sports Google search options, but apparently they’re not available in the UK. We’ll likely see Google in Vodafone Live across Europe fairly soon. You don’t do a partnership like that without using it…

Via Pocket Picks

Om Malik lets us know that Skype 3.2 beta is out for Windows. While I have not given it a go since I’m on the Mac platform nowadays, it’s a pretty safe bet it is a good choice. Skype betas tend to be pretty stable and well worth to download, at least the last ones I’ve used.

The biggest news are the option to send money via PayPal in Skype, and importing contacts from web based services such as the major players in webmail.

Check out the beta if you’re on Windows.

Egyptian blogs are exposing voter fraud, with video taken via mobile phones showing ballot stuffing at the recent referendum giving the State more powers to crack down on Islamic dissent.

According to The Peninsula,

A handful of video clips, most of which appear to be taken by mobile phone cameras and circulated on Egyptian blogs and websites, contain some of the first images of alleged fraud in the vote and could reinforce the accusations of vote fixing…In one of three clips viewed by Reuters, a man purported to be an election official in the Nile Delta appears to mark names on a voter list, then folds a pile of ballots and stuffs them into a transparent vote box. A close-up of one of the ballots shows it is marked with a “Yes” vote.

PayPerPost is offering a $5 per post special according to a report at iMedia Connection.

Here’s the thing, it sounds like PayPerPost (PPP) is getting desperate by heavily discounting paid posting by dropping premium pricing. I know spin when I see it, and sampling offers are usually a sign that there’s a lack of advertisers, and hence a lack of liquidity in a business.

Ted Murphy’s spin:

This promotion provides an incredible opportunity for blog marketers to experiment with our system in order to determine what price and segmenting options provide the maximum return and fill rates in our marketplace

Decoded: we are running out of paid advertisers so we want to offer lower rates so potential advertisers can check the product out and hopefully become long term buyers.

Now I’m not even trying to get involved in the PPP/ ethics debate, I don’t use PPP although I did sign up for an account there when they launched so I could check them out. It’s not my thing, but having said that I’m not everyone so I don’t begrudge anyone running paid postings. But I can smell a fish from a mile off, and this one smells a little off color. Whether it’s the first sign of the end of PPP…it’s too early to say, but you don’t run these sort of offers when the advertisers are queuing at the door.

France based English blogger Catherine Sanderson, controversially sacked last year for keeping an anonymous blog detailing her work life, that didn’t actually name her employer, has won her unfair dismissal case against employer Dixon Wilson.

The Times reports that Dixon Wilson was ordered to pay $59,000 in damages to Sanderson, and to refund unemployment benefits paid to her since she sacked in April 2006.

The sacking of Sanderson, whilst undoubtedly unfair, gave her at least 15 minutes of fame, possibly more, with a six-figure contract with Penguin being signed to convert the blog into a book.

Internet Advertising in the United Kingdom surged in 2006, overtaking Newspaper Advertising for the first time.

According to the Beeb, online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to $3.94 billion in UK during 2006 where as newspaper ads in the same market grew just 0.2% to $3.73 billion, some $200 million behind online spending.

Internet advertising now accounts for 11.7% of all advertising in the UK.

Dave Winer has written a lengthy post covering his thoughts on the “OMG somebody threatened death against Kathy Sierra meme”, short version: Sierra death meme game over.

It’s hard to pick the best bits from the post, the whole thing is utterly brilliant, you can read it here, but some highlights:

Just want to get on the record as Michelle Malkin did yesterday, that the kind of abuse that Kathy Sierra reported is not anything new, it’s been going on for a very long time…

People aren’t going to like this, but it’s true — when a woman asks for a riot she gets one, and almost no one comes to the defense of a man who is attacked. Who’s more vulnerable? Well, honestly, it’s not always a woman…

Those who provided the riot Ms Sierra asked for, unknowingly, I’m sure, attacked at least one person whose health is pretty fragile. I wonder how y’all feel now that you know that. I wonder how you’d feel if that person died in the midst of the shitstorm…

There should be people who are willing to provide personal support to others who are ostracized this way — and that support should be available regardless of gender, age, or other circumstances. I won’t support anything that only offers support to women and not men, we must help unpopular people, even people who we think are mean…

There’s a pile more goodness at Scripting News. I’ve taken the occasional shot at Winer over the years, mostly light heatedly (at least I hope he took it that way), but I know there are a lot of people out there who can’t stand him. If you’re one of those people, open your minds and reassess the man, because only sheer genius can write something like this, and Winer deserves a pile of respect for it.

Tags: Dave Winer, Kathy Sierra

Bug, or deliberate? New York to Dublin, Ireland via Google Maps:

My question though: if you were swimming across the Atlantic to get to Ireland why would you come ashore in France then hook back through England to get there? bizarre :-)

(via Kottke)

A study by Media-Screen has found that only 5% of people with broadband connections in the United States, approximately five million people, use the mobile Internet, despite 60% of them having a mobile internet device.

The report also found that mobile internet remains unpopular due to cost and connectivity issues including coverage.

Worse still, if you’re running a Web 2.0 company aimed at mobile users, the report found that those using mobile internet perform an average of 3.3 online activities on their mobile device per session, compared to 13.4 activities on regular computers..essentially those using mobile internet don’t actually do a lot with it.

Full details from the study can be found here.

(via Center for Media Research email)